When the Anglican church can’t follow its own code

Most Australians are as unsurprised by skullduggery in the church as by double-dealing in government. It's almost like they expect it. Yet even that low bar has stumped the church of late.

Screws in tyres? Disappearing pets? Trolls? Threats? Cover-ups? To those who despise Christianity but claim to live by its values, I say, terrific. Never have we needed truth and compassion more. But what if the church itself forsakes those values? Can a moral code survive without its core players? What if the Pharisees are back in charge?

Illustration: Simon Bosch

The Pharisees, you recall, were a bunch of domineering, hypocritical and intensely tribal priests who prioritised appearance over truth, corporate advantage over noble deeds and stifled all dissent. "Blind guides," Jesus called them, polishing the cup's exterior while ignoring its putrid contents. In short, they pretty much epitomise the Australian view of authority.

It's not just the ongoing nightmare of institutionalised child-sex abuse and the decades-long connivance that implies. Nor even the antediluvian opposition to women preachers and same-sex marriage. Exacerbating all that is an increasingly aggressive stamping out of dissent.

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You might think an institution of diminishing influence would engage its internal questioners in eager debate. You might expect the church, having been built around a rocker-of-boats and tipper-of-apple carts, to know that comfortable words pattered out over tea are not the only ones to hear.

The tellers of uncomfortable truths are those we most need. People whose truths come at significant cost to themselves, whose truths are wrenched from them; they're the heroes, the soothsayers, the prophets. But these are voices the church now works to destroy.

Two extraordinary examples are last week's delicensing of Sydney Anglican priest Dr Keith Mascord for advocacy of same-sex marriage, and the ongoing vituperation of child sex-abuse whistleblower Greg Thompson, Anglican bishop of Newcastle.

Neither is a natural rebel. Unlike (say) Father Rod Bower, the Anglican priest at Gosford whose brilliant noticeboards regularly go viral, both Mascord and Thompson have been dragged to rebellion by a sense of profound injustice.

The Canadian-born Mascord was reared as a creationist; an unlikely start for an advocate of same-sex marriage. Until middle life he was happily ensconced in a literalist fundamentalism that might seem smug had it not brought him, through the scholarly (yet deeply conservative) tradition of Moore College, to doubt.

Most students, says Mascord, gradually stop questioning. He just kept right on, and now considers the Sydney church to be in serious error – about literalism, inerrancy (the thesis that the Bible cannot be wrong), anti-feminism and its anti-gay stance. These errors, he says, are "damaging to women, and damaging to LGBTQI people".

In a closely argued paper titled: "The ever-shrinking case against same sex marriage", Mascord uses logic to demolish the semantic argument that marriage is defined by heterosexuality or procreation, and biblical scholarship to argue that prohibitions on "sodomy" were intended not to outlaw homosexuality but to ban power-based promiscuity – what we'd term sexual abuse. He insists, further, that ancient beliefs in the "unnaturalness" or voluntary nature of homosexuality are antiquated and unsustainable.

These arguments appear also in Mascord's recent book Faith without Fear, which is so at odds with dominant Sydney Anglicanism that, last week, Archbishop Glenn Davies revoked his licence to preach.

Mascord remains stubbornly friendly with the archbishop and others instrumental in his sacking. Yet he insists he will "stand up against what is erroneous," including Sydney Anglicanism's now "cultish" atmosphere where – although about 15 per cent, he says, privately support him – people are "too afraid to speak, or even think alternative thoughts".

The same sense of secrecy and enforced silence flavours Thompson's descriptions of his recent experience, in the Newcastle diocese but constantly under the eye – if not the jurisdiction – of Sydney. "It's like dealing with a secret society," he says.

Thompson, also a lifetime clergyman, was "enthroned" as bishop in 2014. Two years earlier Newcastle's charismatic ex-dean Graeme Lawrence had been defrocked after a series of dramatic child-sex allegations. The new bishop, after a series of "listening" meetings across the diocese was, he says, shocked that people seemed more concerned for the disgraced abuser than his victims.

A group of parishioners petitioned for Lawrence's reinstatement; Thompson refused. Instead, he recorded a passionate video apology to victims of church sexual abuse over decades. Then, last October, the bishop courageously revealed that he himself had been abused – "groomed" – as a 19-year old student within that same Newcastle Anglican church. Throughout, he has actively assisted the royal commission, whose Newcastle hearing resumes in November.

But if Thompson expected this cleansing process to be welcomed he was wrong. He and his staff have been hounded and intimidated. Houses have been repeatedly damaged (one staff member has had to move house four times). A pet dog has mysteriously vanished. Others routinely find screws inserted into their tyres.

Earlier this year 16 parishioners – including former Lord Mayor John McNaughton and former diocesan solicitor Robert Caddies – wrote to the royal commissioner expressing concerns about Thompson's grooming revelations. Their letter clearly annoyed the royal commissioner. They wrote separately to the archbishop, suggesting Thompson's silence about his own abuse was somehow cause for concern.

Since then, bizarrely, one David Ould, a self-described "orthodox Anglican" Sydney rector, blogs repeatedly about Thompson, suggesting that his refusal to discipline Rod Bower for "false teachings" is "divisive" and that his "controlling behaviour" as bishop has generated "widespread dismay with Thompson's actions". He also highlighted a suggestion the 16 parishioners made in their letter to the Archbishop that Thompson may require "a medical, psychiatric or psychological examination".

It's all part of what Mascord calls "the terrible mistreatment of people who have a different view". Mascord's interpretation of this as "an implicit admission of weakness" suggests a last-gasp-of-the-patriarchy optimism. Or you can just call it bullying.

Either way, we have a moral institution that punishes public advocates for tolerance and fairness more harshly than those who enact discrimination and abuse. As Jesus accused the Pharisees, "you strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."

Elizabeth Farrelly is a Sydney-based columnist and author who holds a PhD in architecture and several international writing awards. She is a former editor and Sydney City Councilor. Her books include 'Glenn Murcutt: Three Houses’, 'Blubberland; the dangers of happiness’ and ‘Caro Was Here’, crime fiction for children (2014).